


Angle of Descent

by daphnaea



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Casual Sex, F/M, Guilt, Pilots, not so casual sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 04:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15016391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnaea/pseuds/daphnaea
Summary: She thinks that if they were ever married, they’d have a throwing pots and pans, waking up the neighbors kind of life.  Then a wave of guilt pulls her under.  She expunges the word ‘married’ from her mental vocabulary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta reader, the fabulous and talented Leda13.
> 
> This was written mid-Season 2 (originally posted to Livejournal August 28, 2005). Expect divergence from canon accordingly.

I.

The first time Kara fraks him, she doesn’t remember it.Or at least, she doesn’t right away, when she wakes up the next morning and the only thing on her mind is getting to the head before she loses control of her stomach.As soon as she washes the vomit out of her mouth and off of her face, she smells sex on herself and notices the twinge of soreness between her legs and realizes she must have had a real time the night before.But she’s less concerned about who it was with than whether she’ll be able to keep some coffee down in the immediate future.

When she stops to think about it, later, after a breakfast of toast and a caffeine pill and her morning session in the sims (she was up against Blackout, thank the Gods, who she could take out in her sleep) she guesses maybe Karl, or even that hotshot from the year ahead of her who’s been giving her looks for the last week (what’s his name?Bennett?Bremer?Something like that).She hopes it was Karl – she knows from past experience that he’s unlikely to either broadcast it or expect anything from her.

Lee Adama would be just about the last person on her list.Not because she’d turn him down – she’s seen enough of him in the showers to appreciate that his uniform conceals some awfully attractive territory, and he’s over-controlled enough to make her think he must be repressing something interesting – but because it just seems implausible.The two of them don’t run in the same circles, don’t frequent the same bars, don’t even have many classes together.He’s everything she’s not, and she doesn’t have to know him to know she isn’t his type.So even if there’s a certain predatory heat to the glances they sometimes trade from across the quad or the mess hall or when they’ve just flown against each other in the sims, she certainly never expected anything to come of it.

Except later that night, when she catches sight of Lee laughing at a joke Laurel Scipio just told, she has a sudden flash of his face, flushed and gasping, above her, and has to wrestle down an inexplicable urge to punch Laurel right in her straight, patrician nose.Then Jordan nudges her shoulder and asks “Thrace, who’s in on the game tonight?” and the moment slips by.

But the next morning she’s walking back from the track and hears his voice behind her (and she shouldn’t even be able to recognize it) and the sound goes straight to her groin. _“Gods, Kara.”_ His moan echoes through her mind, rough and raw and close to desperate, except of course he never said that to her.She isn’t even sure he knows her first name.She glances back but he’s already disappeared around a corner.

That afternoon she sees him playing in a pickup game of pyramid, and the muscles of his limbs are far too familiar.She blinks away the image of those arms around her, those legs tangled with her own, and with a sinking feeling acknowledges that maybe it hadn’t been Karl or Berger after all.

A few more half-memories return over the next week, but the puzzle’s still missing too many pieces.She never has enough to make out the picture, to put together the story, how it began or how it ended.Like a dream that can be neither made sense of nor forgotten, it pops into her head at odd times, too vivid and too strange, tantalizingly incomplete.

A series of discreet inquiries reveals that whatever she did that night, none of her friends were around to see it.If it were someone she knew just a little better, she would ask him about it, would turn it into a joke of the ‘guess-it-wasn’t-too-memorable’ persuasion.If it were someone she knew just a little less about, it wouldn’t matter one way or the other.But she’s never quite gotten a fix on Lee (because she’s never paid attention, she tells herself, and why should she?), never figured out how to decode his combination of intensity and restraint.And because he only dates civvie girls, she has no idea if he’d take the suggestion of a drunken tryst as some sort of mortal insult.So she just adds the hypothetical incident to her laundry list of memories to be buried and never exhumed, and puts a little extra effort into avoiding him until a wave of newer indiscretions dulls the burn of the speculative gazes he occasionally throws her way.

*****

By the time she actually gets to know Lee, she’s been dating Zak for five months.She’s a flight instructor, he’s across town at War College ( _fast-tracked_ , they call it, even though he’s still taking classes when she’s already teaching them), and she’s shocked when they become friends.At the Academy, he was always the star student, the model soldier – the opposite of her.The kind of guy she and her friends called cardboard cutout cadets, with their razor-straight hairlines and polished boots and perfect posture.The kind of guy who sat in the front row of every class and took notes religiously.When Kara wrote notes, it was primarily to the friends clustered around her in the back corner, where they could get away with putting their feet up or kicking each other.

She always thought that kind of discipline was an exercise in stupidity, a waste of time that could be spent having fun.But after Lee relaxes around her, starts telling his stories, she figures out that maybe he’s always been the smart one.She learns from him that you can get away with any sin when everyone thinks you’re an angel.His exploits make her jealous, and he never even saw the inside of the brig.Of course she knows she couldn’t play his kind of game if she tried, it’s just not her style.But she respects it.

It also helps that he’s loosened up his act a little –in the years since they graduated, he’s perfected his mask of cold self-possession, but he wears it into bar brawls with her as well as flight sims.In a Viper, she can still beat him, but it’s much harder than it used to be and she wonders with an odd pang if she’s stagnating, spending most of her time on nuggets instead of dogfights.And when she isn’t with her students or with Zak, she’s usually with him.He keeps up with her, around the track and in a late night bullshit session as well as in a fight, and she thinks once, guiltily, that it’s a good thing she and his brother have such an even-keeled relationship because that’s probably more than Zak could do.

And she never, ever thinks about Lee’s arms dewed with a sweeter kind of sweat, or that she once thought she remembered screaming his name.And if he remembers more about her than he should, it never shows in how he looks at her or talks to her, and only possibly in the way he never seems to touch her unless they’re trading blows.If there’s a slow progression from sparring matches at the gym to impromptu wrestling on the floor of Lee’s quarters when the three of them are wasting an evening with cheap ambrosia and a deck of cards, if Zak ends up shouting “Do I have to separate you kids?” every time they end up in the back seat together, elbowing each other and grinning like idiots, then it’s just because they’re practically like siblings.

When Zak proposes, Lee’s the only one they tell.It’s at a bar, and Kara wishes to every God that she’d been looking anywhere but at his face for the split second before he started smiling.She gets a twisty feeling in her stomach and nudges him, saying “So now you’re going to be stuck with me forever, bro,” and then there’s a pause as both of them try to figure out if that’s a good thing.Lee orders them another round instead of replying, mumbling a congratulatory toast before slamming his shot down.

The morning after, when they spar, he gives her a black eye.In the next round she punches him in the mouth and he spits blood onto her shirt.It probably would have been funny, if either of them had been laughing.

One night, at a party, they’ve all had too much to drink and Kara is on Zak’s lap and Lee is next to them on the couch and when Zak gets up to locate more beer, he slides her over to Lee, grins, and says “Hold onto her for a minute, would you?”, and she’s just drunk enough to let it happen, to lean back into Lee’s chest even as she makes a face and sends a rude gesture in Zak’s direction.It’s a mistake, and he’s got to know it too, but it was Zak’s idea and maybe that’s what gives him permission to loop an arm around her stomach and pull her more firmly against him.He doesn’t acknowledge how fast she’s breathing, or how damp her hand is against his arm, and she pretends not to notice his thumb moving gently up and down her side.They’re both laughing too hard at someone else’s joke when Zak comes back with bottles in both hands, and the look on his face tells them that it’s not funny anymore.No one’s laughing when Kara slips back onto Zak’s lap, and it’s three more drinks and half an hour before she can meet either of their eyes.

There’s no such thing as drunk enough to talk about that night at the Academy, though, because really what is there to say about hot, ambrosia-borne sex you are about eighty percent sure you once had and are a hundred percent sure you can never have again?

By nature she’s not a worrier, but one night she wonders what she’d say if Zak ever asked her whether she’d frakked his brother.She’s lied to him before, of course, about trivia and about a few less trivial things (“How many bones have you broken?”“Three.”“How come you never talk about your mom?”“She’s dead.”“How’re my landings?”“Much better.”), but never about something like that..

But then later, after she’s come from a bout against Lee in the ring or the sims and she’s found Zak and frakked him long and hard to work off the electric charge buzzing through her, she lies across him on her bed, feeling the sweat cool on the sheets beneath them, and wishes he would ask.Because if their sin were confessed, maybe it could be expiated.But the question never occurs to him, or else maybe he figures he’s better off not knowing, so her guilt grows fat and sleek and she feels the need to give him something, anything, to offer up a sacrifice as proof of her devotion.

*****

After Zak’s death, she avoids Lee for weeks.Old guilt and new guilt mingle together until she can’t bear to think about him, about what she took from him, about what the two of them took from Zak.She finally relents, agreeing to meet him because she knows she’s hurting him, and she’s hurt him enough already.

When he answers his door, she notices with a dull, anesthetized sort of surprise that his apartment is a disaster and his hair is too long and his jacket is dirty, but then she thinks it makes sense that they’d be opposites even in this.Her boots are shining for the first time in years and she washes her hair every morning at precisely oh six hundred and she’s cleaned out her apartment though the simple expedient of throwing everything in plain sight away.Because it turned out that even she could only stay drunk for so long, and after she finally sobered up for the funeral, she found that the only thing left to propel her through the days was the rigid order of a military schedule.

She knows she isn’t Starbuck anymore, she doesn’t think she’s even properly alive, but somehow over the years she’s learned to be a good soldier, and it turns out you don’t have to think or feel or care about anything when you can just follow orders and let that be the beginning and end of everything.They won’t let her anywhere near the nuggets, of course, or up in a Viper either, so they put her under one: she spends twelve hours a day in the innards of planes, and she likes it because broken planes can be fixed, because they don’t talk and they don’t look at her like she’s still supposed to be a person.

Unlike Lee, who is already talking and looking at her with those dangerously blue eyes and the hell of it is that, even after everything, seeing him makes her feel just a little bit like Kara again, like maybe everything that matters in her isn’t six feet underground after all, and that is unacceptable.He wants to know how she’s doing and she wants to tell him that she killed his brother (after which he will probably not care whether she’s been eating, so at least it’ll get her out of answering that question) but he starts crying before she can get the words out, so then how can she take herself away from him when she’s the only thing keeping him up off the floor?

She holds him for what seems like hours, mumbling nonsense and rubbing his back and stroking his hair, and she wishes she could cry with him but she can’t, because tears are for people who get hurt, not for people who kill.Lee doesn’t let go of her even after he stops shaking, he just burrows his face into her neck and squeezes her harder.She doesn’t think she’s ever hated herself quite as much as she does when she realizes that having him wrapped around her is making her feel a little warm and melty.She’s never thought of herself as a particularly good person, but loyalty is one of her few virtues and she’s unwilling to give up more of it than she already has, so she knows she has to get far away from Lee, has to go someplace he’ll never follow.

She accepts the post Commander Adama has offered her on the _Galactica_ soon after.Lee doesn’t come to say farewell.She thinks it’s good that he hates her, even if it’s for the wrong reason.  
  


II.

Two years later, Lee Adama is dead and the only place she can think about him is under her Viper.She knows she ought to go and see the Old Man, offer her sympathy, but she thinks the weight of his grief would break her, and they’re at war and she doesn’t have time to fall apart, so she swallows the scream that’s been stuck in her throat all day and gives the socket wrench in her hand a vicious twist and wonders how many toasters she’s going to need to take out before she can go and be with her boys.There’s always been a killer in her, a hunter coiled, waiting to strike, and beneath the shock and the pain she can feel a darkness rising, a hunger that can only be sated on destruction.She may be lucky at cards, but it’s no secret that violence is her greatest skill, and she will paint the void of space fire-red with her victims.

Or she would if she could just get her bird flying, this relic with a hole in its engine and forty years of grime caked onto its fuel lines.She wipes the fitting clean, squirts it with oil, and retightens the bolt.She wishes Lee had never come to _Galactica_ , had never laughed with her and glared at her and walked away from her.She wishes she hadn’t known that he was still Lee, even if his broken places had never quite healed, and she wishes he had died far away, in some distant corner of the solar system where his loss would have just been part of the larger tragedy.She wishes she’d waited three more minutes before bringing up his father, wishes she’d gotten to find out what his last two years had been like.She wishes she’d told him the truth.

But done is done and dead is dead and Lee is a smear of ash on a jagged piece of debris spinning through space, and there really isn’t any point in wishing for anything but a flying bird and a target in her crosshairs.Kara feels nauseous and the scream in her throat is making it hard to breathe and if the **damn frakking thrice-cursed bolt** would just **frakking fit right** , then **maybe** , then maybe…

She bites her lip too hard and pulls on the socket wrench with the strength of desperation and the bolt finally tightens all the way.Suddenly there’s nothing to fight against and tears burn her eyes.She feels defeated.The plane will fly and she will shoot and kill and scream and the worlds will still be gone and dead will still be dead and when she dies, that won’t make things right either.

She needs a break.She rolls out from under the Viper and grabs the sandwich she couldn’t finish earlier.She’s still not hungry, but her body needs fuel just as much as her bird does, so she takes a bite and concentrates on chewing the tasteless lump of bread and processed meat.She looks up as she swallows.A dead man is walking across the hangar bay towards her.She feels lightheaded.Lee smiles.She waits for reality to snap back into place, for her eyes to clear, for the punch line of the gods’ joke.It doesn’t come.

“Hi,” he says.

The scream in her throat is gone, and a new tightness takes its place, but she has no name for it.

*****

Starbuck’s exultant scream echoes over the wireless channel as her Viper shoots through a barrel roll, guns blazing, and three more Raiders go up in flames. _I am become death, destroyer of worlds_ , she thinks, unable to remember where the line comes from, and it isn’t right anyway, because they’re the ones who destroyed the worlds, not her. _Destroyer of destroyers of worlds_ , she amends, and hopes she isn’t so far out of her skull with exhaustion that she’s started to think out loud.Then Dee’s calling them in for jump one-sixty-whatever and she’s coming into the landing pod just behind Lee and flashes on the memory of his bird locked against hers as she sailed them home, stealing him back from death.She wonders idly what the odds were on that stunt, how close she came to killing them both. _Danger to herself and others_ , she thinks, giggling because that’s what they used to lock you up for, back when there were mental institutions, and because it’s also her job description.

She’s high on her own badassitude until her canopy’s open and she tries to stand up and realizes that her legs might not hold her.She stumbles down the ladder, feet sliding against the rough metal steps, keeping herself upright mostly through her death grip on the railing and then Apollo’s there dressing her down for taking stupid risks, but she’s too distracted by how pretty he is to listen.

Her eyes are caught by the line of his lower lip, and she imagines that right then it probably tastes like sweat and coffee and smoke and engine grease, and even though that’s a completely disgusting combination it makes her mouth water a little.She wonders what he’d do if she kissed him right then, right there, and it isn’t even about lust as much as the childish desire to play with him, to be the bad girl.And if it’d been the first time she ever wanted to kiss him she thinks she might’ve done it, despite Zak, because if she hadn’t wanted to while she still had Zak then it wouldn’t really be a sin.

But of course it isn’t the first time, not even close, so she licks her lips, sour and salty, and smirks, but then he finishes his lecture and gives her a worried look, slides his hand down her upper arm before he walks away, and she wishes he would hit her instead because she doesn’t know how to take tenderness from him, it trips her up, defuses the chain reaction of adrenaline and terror and megalomania that’s keeping her going.She sags back against the ladder and closes her eyes and feels the ship spinning slowly, relentlessly around her. 

*****

“New CAG’s boring as hell, but at least the scenery’s nice,” Boomer says conversationally.“Gives us something to look at so we don’t fall asleep in his briefings.”

“He’s not boring, once you get the stick out of his ass,” Kara tells her. 

“So what’s the deal with you two anyway?”

Kara shrugs.“Old friends.Go way back.”

Boomer smirks.“Friends.That what they’re calling it these days?”

“Frak you.”

“Somehow I think you’d rather be frakking Captain Tightass.”

Kara rolls her eyes.“Please.I’d rather frak Gaeta.”

Boomer isn’t convinced, but that doesn’t stop her from spreading this tidbit around as efficiently as possible.Gaeta has no idea why women begin eyeing him speculatively in the corridors, trying to see what he’s got that could compete with Apollo.

*****

“…so there she is, in my rack, bare as the Lords made her, and I’m so drunk I think I must be in the wrong place, so I say ‘Excuse me, is this your bunk or mine?’”

Lee pauses to take a drink from the glass of ambrosia in front of him and the rest of the pilots chuckle, except for Kara, who says “Awww, did they not teach you what to do with naked girls at War College?”

“Well Kara, though we can’t all have the personal experience of a whole Picon whorehouse, I am familiar with the basic mechanics.”

There’s a muffled sound as Racetrack, Crash, and Hotdog try to swallow their laughter so they won’t get hit.Crash eyes Lee’s mostly-empty ambrosia glass like he’s wondering just how drunk the CAG’s got to be just now.

“Just the basics?Maybe we should sign you up for the advanced course.”

“Oh, I know better than to compete with you – I don’t think there’s enough people left alive in the universe for me to catch up.”

Racetrack looks like she thinks Apollo’s about to get smacked and she hopes it doesn’t damage his face permanently, but Kara’s fighting not to grin.“You know what they say,” she tells him, “practice makes perfect.”

He sneers a little.“If that were true, you’d be frakking Aphrodite.And frankly,” he rakes cold eyes down her, “I don’t see it.”

She raises her eyebrows.“Actually, the gods are frequently invoked in the presence of my unbridled,” she coughs, “glory.And I promise, no one’s ever complained.”

He raises an eyebrow, smiles unpleasantly.“Maybe not to you.”

Suddenly it’s not funny anymore.Her hand twitches but other than that she’s perfectly still and he doesn’t look away from her eyes and everyone else is invisible and she doesn’t know why they’re both so angry but murder is palpable in the air.They must be drunk by now but she feels much too sober and his gaze is bright, unflinching.“I frakking hate you,” she says, and her voice is not too loud or soft or high or low but it indisputably sounds wrong.

“I hate you more,” he tells her calmly.

Moments pass.Neither of them will look away.Hotdog fidgets with his pile of cubits, trying to work up to making a bet, getting the game back underway, but no one else pays attention.Eventually Kara’s lips pull back, revealing teeth.It’s not a smile.“Good,” she says.

“Great,” he says.

“Fan-frakking-tastic.”

Lee’s eyes narrow.“Hotdog?Your bet?” he asks tonelessly, still looking at Kara.

Hotdog can’t remember his hand but he throws a few coins into the pot without checking.Crashdown follows suit.

“Kara?” Lee asks.

“I fold.”

She scoops up her money and leaves the room without looking back.

She dogs the hatch shut behind her, then leans back against its cool metal, waits until she can breathe properly.Her fists are clenched and the drunk part of her mind thinks she should go back in there and lay him out, but maybe that’s what he wants, and anyway it would just be embarrassing to hit him in front of a nugget.

She hears Racetrack’s voice faintly, through the door, “She had full colors.”

Kara walks away.

*****

They don’t do apologies, never have.For days she can’t look at him without snarling.She has all the nuggets so scared they won’t speak to her voluntarily, on duty or off.

He cracks first, most likely out of guilt, she thinks, because he can be a stubborn son of a bitch when he thinks he’s got the high ground.

His first offering is coffee, delivered to her table at breakfast.She knocks the cup over as soon as he puts it down, and his reflexes are sharp but not sharp enough – the hot liquid spatters his leg, and she knows he’ll have to change before the start of his shift.

The next morning he brings a muffin instead – a safe choice, she thinks, room temperature, not sharp or wet.She sweeps it off the table, stands up, steps on it as she leaves the table.

By the time he’s run through all the food groups, it’s almost a game, like some farcical avian mating ritual.His daily pilgrimage becomes a popular show – the whole mess hall turns to watch every morning when he approaches her table.That’s her favorite part.

She almost gives in when he brings her a stogie, but if she takes it she won’t get to find out what he’ll come up with tomorrow.She rolls it over toward Boomer instead, who grins and tucks it into a pocket.

The day after, he deposits a small box on the table in front of her.She can tell from his face that she’d be better off opening it elsewhere, but picking it up would be conceding too soon.She pulls the lid off.Inside is a metal hexagon, just like the ones she wears around her neck.She knows whose name she’ll find on it without looking.Her jaw clenches.She picks it up with clumsy fingers, closes her fist around it too tightly.Its corners dig into her palm.She stands abruptly, chair legs screeching across the floor.Almost gets to the head before she breaks down.

After she stops crying, she inspects the dog tag, runs a finger across the letters.Turns it over in her hand.Realizes that it’s almost certainly the last piece of Zak that Lee had – something he’d stuck in his pocket like a talisman the morning of his half-day assignment to _Galactica_.She imagines that he carried it with him everywhere.Imagines him placing it carefully into that small brown box, touching it a final time.She pulls the chain from around her neck, adds the extra tag.When it slides back on, the metal is cool against her chest.It’s not the slightest bit heavy, but the weight on her is so great that it’s several minutes before she can stand.

That evening she corners him in the bunkroom.She grabs his hand, presses Zak’s tag into his palm, curls his fingers closed around it.He gives her a questioning look.She just shakes her head, squeezes his hand tighter.He reaches out, clasps her shoulder, studies her face.They stare at each other, the pain between them burning as bright and hot as their rage ever has.Finally, she lets go of his hand.He nods once, tucks the tag into his pocket, lets his other hand slide down her arm.She turns away.

*****

The next morning he oversleeps, and when he finally rolls out of his rack she’s already coming back from breakfast.She smiles at his stubbled, panicky face and offers him her mug of coffee.

*****

Soon they’re at it again, sniping at each other in the gym, and it’s exhausting and she’s sick of it and she can never get enough.It’s like wiggling a loose tooth – she doesn’t exactly like the way it feels, but she always has to try it just once more to make sure.

They’re on the stair machines and that seems appropriate, ever upward, getting nowhere – she thinks of Sisyphus, wonders which of them is the rock.

When he calls her a selfish brat with no self-control, she watches his cheeks, flushed apple red, the rivulets of sweat trailing down them, thinks maybe she was wrong, she’s Tantalus instead.The name doesn’t matter, really, the fact remains that this is their own private suite in hell.She thinks it’s gotten kind of homey, but then she’s not from the most functional family.

She pulls her gaze away from him, says, “Well, we can’t all be gods, Mr. Captain Apollo, Sir.”Wonders if this time they’ll be able to stop while they’re still smiling.

*****

He drops down into the chair next to hers at the mess hall, plucks the sandwich from her hand, takes a bite of it, drops it onto her plate.

*****

She pulls the pen from between his fingers, rolls it contemplatively, swirls her tongue around the end of it, pushes the last half inch into her mouth, sucks gently.It tastes like metal and skin and she pumps it in and out of her mouth for a few seconds, gives it a delicate bite, and slips it back into his hand.He swallows.

*****

Whenever they run together in the mornings, it starts out as a simple jog but ends up as a chase.She comes up from behind, grabs the back of his shirt, shoves him towards the nearest wall, disappears around a corner, laughter echoing behind her.He catches up when she’s starting up a flight of stairs, grabs the waist of her pants and for a comical second she tries to take her next step and gets nowhere.Then he pulls harder, pulls her back down but he miscalculates the angle of her descent and she lands on top of him, a sprawl of knees and elbows on the floor.She squirms and there’s a moment when they’re chin to chin and chest to chest and then he pulls her shirt up so her head is stuck in it and he’s up and running again.

*****

There’s a kind of anxious energy that seizes her whenever they’re in the same room.She can’t keep her mouth shut around him, can’t sit still, not if things are even remotely ok.The urge to make him react is irresistible.On some level she knows she probably doesn’t have to try so hard to get his attention.She doesn’t go to that level very often.Or the one that tells her that she always gives him Starbuck because he really wants Kara, that he looks at her like she shines and talks to her with weary contempt because that’s just the hook and bait to catch someone like her, to make her circle back for more.She likes the bruises he gives her, likes that she can make him so mad he forgets to pull his punches.Once she thinks that if they were ever married, they’d have a throwing pots and pans, waking up the neighbors kind of life.Then a wave of guilt pulls her under.She expunges the word ‘married’ from her mental vocabulary.

In battle, he takes risks, she takes more.However close he flies to death, she wants to be closer, to push harder, to skate the razor edge between him and oblivion.If one of them goes up in flames, she wants it to be her.If one of them is screaming rage and terror on the hangar deck, she wants it to be him.Because if he wants her to stay alive, that’s a kind of wanting her, a kind she can accept.

*****

After Caprica, after Kobol, he becomes erratic, gentler one day, crueler the next.She’s more bitter, more serious; it’s harder for her to summon the energy to fight back.She wishes he’d just shut the frak up, she thinks maybe things would be all right between them if they never spoke again.

Then one day at lunch he flicks a spoonful of lukewarm soup at her face and she gives him an are-you-five? look, but it doesn’t stop her from smearing ketchup down his arm.He retaliates with soup in her hair and she dumps her cup of water into his lap and he wipes some sort of vegetable-esque mush onto her shoulder and she grabs Helo’s soup from behind her and flings the whole thing in his direction, spattering the table and floor and the better part of Apollo’s upper body, and he shoves more of the green mush down the front of her shirt and they’re both laughing so hard that neither of them notices Commander Adama walking up behind them.

After that it’s back to their standard rotation of dirty fights and searching looks and stupid antics, even if the list of things they shouldn’t talk about but do anyway when they want to hit below the belt is now exponentially longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thinks that if they were ever married, they’d have a throwing pots and pans, waking up the neighbors kind of life. Then a wave of guilt pulls her under. She expunges the word ‘married’ from her mental vocabulary.

III.

The second time they frak it’s a disaster, and Kara wishes she didn’t remember it, but she does.

It’s the night after Kat’s death and they’re sitting back to back on the floor of _Galactica_ ’s ex-landing pod/gift shop, passing a bottle of the Chief’s moonshine back and forth.

After a long silence, Lee says, “So how much longer you think we’re going to do this?”

“Do what?” she asks wearily.

“Pretend we’re not going to sleep together.”

Oh.That.She takes a long drink, the rough burn of the liquor down her throat stinging her eyes.She’s definitely not drunk enough to talk about this.“Dunno.You got a better suggestion?”

“We could just get it over with.”

She doesn’t think he intends the flat, neutral tone of his voice to cut so deep.“Why Lee, you charmer, with a silver tongue like that it’s a wonder the ladies aren’t lined up from here to CIC just waiting for you to get them over with.”

“No, I’m serious,” he says.“Don’t you get sick of it?I mean…Hasn’t it all gotten kind of…Obvious?Maybe it’s time to cut the schoolyard bullshit and just do it and move on.”He’s twisted towards her a little, put a hand down over one of hers, but they still can’t see each other.

His fingers on hers are warm and distracting, and despite what he’s saying they move across her skin with a kind of tenderness, and that’s what keeps her from smacking him.“Are you honestly trying to talk me into frakking you just so we can leave each other alone?”

“I think so,” he says.

It’s the worst idea she’s ever heard, but his fingers are tracing up and down her wrist and she doesn’t want them to stop.“And then tomorrow?”

“We’ll be friends.Who don’t have to throw things at each other so often.”

That isn’t at all what she wants from him, but it’s what she ought to want, it’s what they ought to be.And for a split second she wants to believe it can happen, that it could be that easy.The more rational, sober part of her mind is telling her that she’ll hate both of them for going through with it, but he’s stroking the inside of her arm and she keeps hearing Kat screaming and she wants to be filled with something, even if it isn’t real, even if it isn’t hers to keep.

“So you’re just proposing…A release of tension.Between friends.”She wants to be clear on just how little he’s offering.

“Yeah,” he says like he really isn’t sure, and she can see how this is his compromise between how much he wants to touch her and how much he knows he isn’t supposed to.It’s a kind of cheating, thinking they can have a little bit of each other as long as they pretend that it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s not really what they want at all.It’s cowardice, and she’d hit him for it except then he’d stop touching her and she really wants him to keep touching her because his hands are gentle and alive and they haven’t exploded yet but they might tomorrow, just like Kat who saw it coming but still couldn’t– 

“Ok,” she says.

He very deliberately screws the cap back onto their bottle of rotgut and she’s still wondering whether he’s actually going to go through with this when the answer arrives in the form of his mouth on hers.He pushes her down, straddles her, and the floor is cold and he is warm and his lips are demanding, he bites her and then soothes the flesh with his tongue and she can’t find her breath, can’t even open her eyes.She grabs the back of his head and pulls him deeper because it’s working, he’s driving everything else away and she isn’t thinking about Kat or how tired she is or even about how much she’s going to regret this tomorrow.

Since this night is all they get, she thinks they ought to savor it but they can’t, because if they slow down they might think about what they’re doing, about how right it is or how wrong it is and either way it’d be a disaster, and it’s not like they need to build up to anything because after however many years of dancing around this every casual touch has become a seduction so this onslaught of caresses is like standing in a waterfall – until it comes fast and heavy enough, you never think about how something as soft as a drop of water or the skin of a finger can knock the air right out of you.

They peel off each other’s shirts and the heat of his chest against hers is dizzying and she’s breathing too fast, she’s feeling too much, feeling all the things she’s not supposed to, and she keeps telling herself _just a frak, just a frak, just a frak_ and she almost wishes it was the rough skin of someone else’s hands rasping across her breasts, down her sides, between her legs, because she’s good at casual sex but she’s forgotten how to have it with him.She turns her head away because she doesn’t know if it would be worse to see too much in his eyes or too little, digs her nails into his back to leave a mark that can’t be washed away 

He pushes into her and she thinks she’s coming apart, thinks it might be perfect if it wasn’t killing her and she wants more, wants everything, wants him so close there won’t even be room for Zak’s ghost between them.Her legs tighten around him and her fingers clench at his hips and she opens her eyes only to see that his are closed.She buries her face in his neck so she won’t have to see him not seeing her.He smells like sweat and Lee and alcohol and his arms surround her and he’s pumping into her so hard she knows she’s going to have bruises from the floor but it isn’t hard enough because she can still think, so she hitches her legs up higher around him and brings her hips up faster and he drops kisses onto the side of her head and for a minute she forgets that he won’t look at her and that this isn’t what it’s supposed to be like and when she comes she bites his shoulder.It doesn’t bleed, and she wishes she’d bitten harder.

After he finishes, they roll apart almost immediately.She glances at him.He still isn’t looking at her.She can feel the heat of his body lingering on her chest, his sweat sticky on her skin, but according to the terms of their arrangement they’re just friends again, and a deal’s a deal.It hits her that she just let him frak her so he wouldn’t have to want her anymore and she wants to hit him, but that would reveal too much.She remembers that her mother once told her that no one who really knew her would ever love her, right after her first boyfriend left her for Julie, one of the pretty girls who wore lip gloss and could never remember the rules of pyramid.That was the first day she ever hit her mother back.She still ended up in the hospital.

Lee pulls his pants up from around his ankles.She shakes the past from her head, gropes on the floor for her bra.Finds their abandoned bottle first, thinks it’s an improvement.Unscrews the cap, takes a long pull, then another.

Lee notices what she’s doing and sits beside her, shirtless. “Not drunk enough yet?”

She shoots a withering glance at his chin.“If we’re still conscious, we’re definitely not drunk enough for tonight.”

“That good, was it?” he asks bitterly.

“I don’t know sir, you tell me.Did your plan work?You all better now? Gotten me out of your system?”

He shrugs, and there’s something painful about the gesture. But he just says, “Hopefully.”

She locates the rest of her clothes, picks them up, and walks away without replying.She dresses in a storage closet and heads to the gym because she doesn’t want to go back to their bunkroom.Besides, she really wants to hit something.

She puts on gloves and goes to work on a punching bag, and sometimes it has his face and sometimes it has her own.She can’t quite believe how stupid she is.This makes the whole thing with Baltar look sweet and healthy in comparison.Her back aches and her thighs are sore and she’s on CAP in five hours, but sleep doesn’t even seem like a possibility.

*****

Lee’s the last person she wants to see, so of course he comes to find her.She can tell he’s there, behind her, even before he starts talking and when she delivers an especially vicious right cross to the bag he winces as if aware that it’s in his honor.

“Kara…I’m sorry,” he says.

“Not good enough,” she grinds out.Right.Left.Right.Left, left.

“What we did…That wasn’t…”

Left.Left, right.“You know Captain, you’re a really shitty friend sometimes.”

“I honestly didn’t want to hurt you.”

She wonders what exactly he did want.Wonders if he even knows.“Go the frak away,” she tells him.

He does.

Rightleftrightleftrightleft. 

When her arms give out, she takes a long shower.Crawls into Helo’s rack because she wants someone next to her, because he wishes she was someone else too.He scoots over to make room for her, mumbles a brief obscenity into her hair, goes back to sleep.She pulls the curtain closed and turns her face into his pillow.

*****

Their CAP is silent the next morning.She calls him Captain Apollo when she has to call him anything, and she doesn’t say it at all like the president does.

Of course it has to be that of all mornings that the cylons find them.Starbuck wishes she felt surprised when the Raiders materialize below them (six, no seven of them) but it turns out she was half expecting it.Maybe she expects it every day.

Apollo gets the first and she gets the second and she’s sure they’re going to pull it off before the reserve fighters even show up until he banks left at just the wrong instant and there’s fire and he’s screaming _“Frakfrakfrak”_ and his Viper’s spinning away and two Raiders peel off to finish him and she’s firing and twisting her bird around to get between them and him at the same time and there’s an explosion but the second Raider’s gotten its next shot off before she can reach it but Apollo somehow wrenches his plane out of the way with its one remaining engine and the shot goes wide and then Starbuck finishes number two but the other three have already reengaged and there’s no way she can keep them all from reaching him and he’s screaming at her to get out of there and she’s screaming too, she’s saying _“Hateyouhateyouhateyouhateyou”_ and she isn’t talking to the cylons and there’s a second when he stops making any noise at all and she thinks that’s the moment that he understands her, but then she’s too busy flying and shooting and not dying to think anymore, she has to be everywhere at once and she can almost do it but there are limits to everything and he’s limping back towards _Galactica_ but he’s too slow, he can’t get away and now there are only two Raiders left but it’s still enough, one’s right on her tail and her luck’s got to run out soon except just as it fires on her she’s flipping up and over and the missile screams past him into the Raider that had circled around behind him and they both start laughing because that’s just impossible and not even she thought it would work and three seconds later the final Raider’s a globe of fire and around them the civilian ships are winking out of existence as the fleet jumps to the emergency coordinates before a basestar can show up, and she hates that even after everything she can’t stop needing him to live, but all she says over the wireless is, “Can you make it back on your own or do I need to give you another ride?” 

She’s just gotten her feet on the hangar deck when _Galactica_ makes her jump, and when the world has righted itself and blood is moving through her veins again she turns around, blinks at the wreckage of Lee’s plane.He’s in his cockpit, struggling with his helmet, and she heads for the exit before she has to see his face.

She’s in the head, splashing water on her face, when he finds her.She’s stripped her flight suit down to her waist and her shirts show damp circles of sweat.

“Frak off,” she says when she catches his reflection in the mirror.

“I told you to leave me,” he tells her, but he isn’t yelling.“That was a stupid risk.”

She straightens, wipes at the water dripping from her chin, meets his eyes in the mirror.“You’re alive and I’m alive, so I really don’t get what the problem is.”

“Why’d you do it?” he asks, face impassive, voice revealing only curiosity.“Why’d you stay?”

She smiles without meaning it.“Captain, I think you really have no idea how much I don’t want to be CAG.”

“Yeah.The paperwork’s a bitch.”

She dries her face with a towel and starts to walk away.

“Kara, wait,” he calls, moving after her.

“What?” she asks, stopping but not turning around.

“We really have to talk,” he says to her back.

“Is this about last night, Captain?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, I just saved your life so I think it’s safe to say you owe me one.And what I think is that we should just both agree that that was the shittiest plan in the history of shitty plans and leave it at that.Ok?”

“Ok,” he says, even though his voice makes it clear that it’s not.

Her face crumples a little and she’s glad he can’t see.“Then we’re done here.”Two more steps and she’s through the door.Gone.  
  


IV.

Whatever the shortcomings of his plan, it does succeed in getting them out of each other’s hair.She doesn’t avoid him exactly, but somehow she’s never alone with him, either.She uses Helo as a kind of defensive prop, sitting on his lap at card games, smacking his ass in the showers, napping in his rack.The new Sharon’s still under lock and key and Kara can tell he appreciates the distraction, understands what she’s doing.And she never gets tired of seeing Lee walk out of rooms they’re both in.

Lee doesn’t look happy these days, but for all the sad glances he sends her, he mostly just gives her space.Kara figures he never knew quite what to do with her, and now he’s afraid to even try.She lobs casual insults at him across the briefing room or the gym, and no matter what his regrets, he still snaps back with something meant to sting.He hasn’t forgotten that easiest way to hurt her is to pretend he doesn’t care, and she thinks it’s sad that maybe the only thing that hasn’t changed is how good they are at damaging each other.

*****

Kara’s always felt Zak’s presence most around Lee.Not in a creepy, supernatural sort of way, but when Lee’s around she imagines Zak watching them and before, every grin they traded seemed like a new betrayal.Now she imagines Zak watching them as they look past each other, walk by with a grim, sidelong glance and a sideways shuffle to avoid any accidental contact, and somehow she thinks he’d like this even less.She wonders if she’d forgotten how much Zak really loved them both.She wonders how much he always knew. 

*****

She tosses a rolled up pair of socks back and forth from one hand to the other.He plucks it out of the air, gives her his most infuriating smirk.She stands up and walks away.

When she returns to the bunkroom two hours later, skin redolent with sweat and cigar smoke, there’s a smiley face made of socks laid out on her rack.

*****

One morning when she heads out for her morning run, he follows.He doesn’t say a thing, just falls into step behind her, and she ignores him for three circuits around the ship.When they get back to the bunkroom, she holds the hatch open for him.He brushes a hand across her shoulder as he goes past.

The next day they’re on opposite shifts, but the one after he’s lacing up his running shoes when she heads for the door.She stops at her locker, rummages through it until he’s done, then heads out into the corridor without looking at him.Halfway through their run they come to an empty stretch of passageway and he closes the distance between them, runs alongside her for a few minutes.Then they round a corner and there’s a crowd ahead of them and he falls back, lets her reclaim the lead.

A week later she pushes harder, faster than usual for their first circuit, then drops down onto a storage crate at the side of the corridor for a rest.He sits beside her, his arm an inch and a half from her hip.

“You know that really stupid plan I had once?” he asks her.

She grunts an assent.

“It totally didn’t work,” he says.

She ducks her head in what could be construed as a nod, pushes herself up off the crate and starts running.She doesn’t want him to see her smile.

*****

He assigns them to the CAP together for the first time in weeks.She launches first, and when he catches up with her, she says “Watcha hear, Lee?”

It’s been so long since she called him anything but Captain that he’s almost forgotten what his name sounds like on her lips.He grins, uselessly happy, says, “Nothing but you.”Coughs.“Anyone who talks about the vast silence of space has obviously never been out here with you.”

She launches into a loud, tuneless rendition of “The Maid of Aerilon,” raising her voice even further at the naughty bits.

He laughs, joins in on the chorus.

When they finish, Dee requests “The Governor’s Daughter.”

They perform needlessly complex maneuvers in tight formation, just for the joy of flying together, Corinthian Eights and Geminon Tumbles and Zeus Rolls.He challenges her to a Larsen’s Run, she counters with a Double Gorgon.

He howls in triumph as they curve out of the final roll.“We still got it,” she crows.

“Buck, we frakkin’ _own_ it.”

“ _I_ own it.But you go ahead and bask in my reflected glory.”

He cuts in front of her. “Bask in my frakking exhaust.”

“Ooh, Captain, talk dirty to me.”

“Kara, I couldn’t get as dirty as you if I didn’t shower for a week.”

“I know,” she sighs, “but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Suddenly she’s upside down above him, grinning at him through their canopies.

“How come you always get to be on top?” he demands.

“You know you love it down there.”

“Frak you.”

“Tempting, but physically impossible just now.”

“Remind me to schedule us for a one-Viper CAP next time.”

She snorts.“Absolutely.Cause think how much fun you’ll have explaining that to Tigh.”

“Oh yeah.Maybe we should just stick to comm sex.”

She laughs.“Whaddaya say, Dee?Up for a threesome?”

“Sure, Starbuck,” Dualla replies cheerfully.“But if that’s an official request, maybe I should run it by the Commander.”

“You tell the Old Man and I’m telling Billy you said yes,” she threatens.

“What makes you think he’d mind?” Dee asks quietly.

Starbuck attempts to imagine sweet, stuttering Billy with his ugly shirts and easy blush not minding, finds she can’t do it.

“Race you home,” Apollo cuts in, leaping ahead of her before she can reply.

*****

Back in the landing bay, he’s waiting at the foot of her ladder when she climbs down from her cockpit.He grins at her; she frowns at him like he’s a hand of cards she can’t decide what to do with.

“Want to grab some lunch?” he asks.

“Can’t.Meeting Helo,” she tells him, trading Cally her helmet for a clipboard and starting on her post-flight rundown.

“What about dinner?”

She glances around to see how far away Cally’s gotten, then meets his eyes.“Lee.What do you want from me?”

“Gods, Kara.I just want us to eat some mystery glop and talk about pilot stuff.There’s no evil plan.”

“There better frakking not be a plan.”She shrugs.“Meet you at nineteen hundred.”

*****

Dinner passes uneventfully.They talk about the newest batch of nuggets, the president’s health, Hotdog drunk and shirtless at the card game a few nights ago.She only glares at him a little.

When they part ways outside the mess hall, he touches her arm.“I missed you,” he says.

She wants it not to matter, but it does.

*****

Lee’s writing up patrol schedules in the rec room.Kara’s at the larger table, dealing cards to Gaeta, Dee, Mueller and Hammerhead.While the other players study their hands, she grabs a handful of protein crisps from the bowl on the middle of the table, pops one into her mouth, lobs another at Lee.It bounces off his forehead.He shoots her a dirty look.She throws another.It lands on the papers in front of him.

“Knock it off,” he tells her.

She smiles.“I thought we already tried the plan where we weren’t going to throw things at each other.And you didn’t like it.”

The corner of his mouth twitches.He gives a half-shrug, picks the crisp up off his work, chucks it back at her.It bounces off her chest, lands on the floor.She doesn’t bother picking it up, just grabs another and returns fire.Lee snatches it out of the air, eats it.“Thanks,” he says.

“Aww, Starbuck loves him best,” Hammerhead interjects.“How come you never throw anything at the rest of us?”

She glares, tosses a crisp at him.

He grins.“Now my life is complete.”

Lee’s pen cap impacts the back of her head.She twists around in her seat, casting about for new projectiles.

Dee taps her cards impatiently against the table.“Is this a triad game or the Starbuck and Apollo Need to Get Some Show?” she demands.

Kara gives her the finger.

*****

Two days later, throwing things at Lee still hasn’t gotten old.He’s in the shower when she steps into the next stall over, turns on the water.Looks around for ammunition.

He must not have seen her bar of soap coming, because there’s a wet thud and a grunt from his stall.She grins happily.A few seconds later, a washcloth sails over the divider.She leans back and it slaps harmlessly into the shower wall.

“Missed me,” she singsongs.

There’s no reply, so she just has to imagine his expression of amused exasperation.She entertains herself by imagining the rest of him while she washes her hair.After she rinses it, she realizes that her skin is still very far from clean and curses her lack of forethought.

“Hey Lee,” she finally calls, as casually as possible.“Think I could have my soap back?”

“Nope.”

“Come on!”

“Uh uh.”

“But I’ve got engine grease all over,” she whines.

“You should have thought about that before deciding to throw the soap at me,” he says in his supercilious, the-CAG-always-knows-best voice.

“Give it back!”

“You want it?Come and get it.”His smirk is audible.

She considers this for about half a second before taking the bait. 

When she bursts into his stall a moment later, there’s lather on his chest.She’s wrapped a towel around herself.He hasn’t.She holds her hand out imperiously, wiggles her fingers.Almost succeeds in keeping her eyes focused on his face.He shows her the bar of soap, then puts it behind his back.

“Hand it over,” she demands.

His eyes glint dangerously.“I’ll trade you this bar of soap for that towel.”

She rolls her eyes, then shrugs.Her hand goes to the tuck holding the towel up.She makes a show of it, pulls out the corner slowly, waggles her eyebrows, lets the towel slide inch by inch until she’s just holding it to her chest and nothing but a single hand is keeping it from falling to the floor.She gives him her bedroom eyes, winks.Then flings the towel over his head, grabs her soap from his hand and flees, giggling hysterically.

She leaves his shower door open.As she ducks back into hers, she sees the other pilots in the head glancing towards it curiously.There’s the sound of his stall door slamming shut a moment later.It just makes her laugh harder.

*****

Kara concentrates on taking deep, even breaths as she pumps her left leg up and back against the resistance of the weight machine.Seven, eight, nine.A sheen of sweat gilds her skin.Her hair clings damply to the back of her neck.She can feel that her cheeks, her arms are flushed with exertion.Her gaze slides sideways to where Lee’s bench pressing obscenely large weights.He’s looking at her.

Ten, eleven, twelve.She sits up, adds another weight, switches to the other leg.One, two, three.He’s still looking.She turns her head the other way, towards where Hotdog is flirting with some bridge bunny while doing tricep curls, but she can still hear the hiss-grunt of Lee’s breathing.

Four, five, six.She forgets not to look at him, watches a drop of sweat fall from his neck to the floor.Risks his eyes.They’re still focused on her.He doesn’t look away, doesn’t pretend he hasn’t been staring at her since he lay down on that bench.She watches him watching her.His face clenches as he pushes the barbell up, but his eyes never change – they’re serious, forthright, intent like he’s trying to see inside her.They’re making her forget the things she shouldn’t ever forget and she doesn’t want to end up hating him again, but just then she doesn’t hate him at all, and maybe that’s the problem.

Her knee twinges.She has no idea what number she’s on.  
  


V.

The third time she fraks him, she doesn’t know why it happens.There’s no reason, or a thousand reasons – the way he laughed in the corridor the previous day, as if nothing in the world was wrong; the hand he lay on her shoulder the night before when he walked in on the triad game she was in the process of winning – he stood behind her and the hand lingered like it belonged on her, and before he walked away it squeezed her just a little and she had to raise her cards to hide her smile.

Because as she brushed her teeth that morning, he was singing “She’s a Pretty Little Killer” in the shower, and she knew he was singing it for her.

Because at breakfast he was already eating with Racetrack and Birch when she came in, but he excused himself to get another cup of coffee and then brought it over to her table instead of theirs.

Because that afternoon when she was tinkering with the heavy Raider, he came by and watched her work for a while, and when she turned around to look for the spanner, he handed it to her before she could even ask.Because she didn’t even notice that they never said a word to each other until he’d already wandered off again, leaving a bottle of water and the next tool she needed in the place he was sitting.

Because in the semi-darkness of the bunkroom, she hears Racetrack getting herself off as she’s trying to sleep, and then Helo follows suit, and before long she can hear something from Hotdog’s bunk as well; pretty much the whole squadron’s in on it but Lee’s rack is still empty and despite the slight feeling of pressure building between her legs, she doesn’t reach down and relieve it because she refuses to think of him that way, and lately nothing else seems to work.She rolls onto her stomach and tries to think about the arcane wiring of the Raider’s navigational system instead. 

Because when Lee finally comes in, he can’t sleep and the sound of his not-asleep breathing keeps her awake from across the room, so she has no choice but to pull on her sweats and crawl out of her rack and throw his running shoes at him, then let him chase her down the corridors until he’s too tired to worry any more.

Because they happen to run out of steam just around the corner from the abandoned office she’s appropriated as a hiding place, and since she keeps it stocked with moonshine and synthetic chocolate it’s only natural to invite him in for a nightcap.

Because when he flops down next to her on the pile of souvenir _Galactica_ throw blankets she stole from the gift shop’s supply room, he’s close enough that his arm touches hers and even though they’re both unpleasantly sweaty, neither of them shifts away.

Because of the drop of water that clings to his lower lip after he finishes with the bottle she offers him.She wants to lick it off, but he’s staring away into the middle darkness, the hint of a frown line burrowing into his brow, and each time she reaches out for his fire it burns her worse than the time before, and she knows if he says they’re just supposed to be friends one more time she’ll never be able to forgive him.So she just licks her own lips, but then suddenly he’s staring at her instead, frown line even deeper than before.

Because of how he looks at her when he reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.Because the strand in question is soaked with sweat, and after he notices that he wrinkles his nose and wipes the finger off on her shirt with exaggerated disgust.

Because when she rolls her eyes and pushes him halfheartedly, he catches her hand and threads their fingers together, and though she knows with bitter precision how this will shatter her, she can’t seem to pull away.He is the trap she keeps walking back into, and she wonders what part of herself she’ll have to sacrifice to get out this time.She glances down at the place where his thumb rubs softly across the tough skin of her knuckles and even though it’s cool in the office, she keeps getting warmer.

Because it’s too hard to pretend that he isn’t essential – if it weren’t for the necessity of seeing his face, sharing his air, feeling his eyes on her, she would have given up on him a very long time ago.It would be so much easier to just get up, walk out of that room, find a pretty stranger in the hall and pull him into a closet and fall into someone to whom she’s just a pair of tits in the dark, someone with no idea how to rip her to pieces, but she understands that she’d just end up right back here in a month or a year, with just as much hanging in the balance between their two clasped hands.

Because he’s inevitable.

Because he’s Lee.

Because when he leans in towards her, lips parting in anticipation, he keeps his eyes open and fixed on hers the whole time.

*****

Afterwards, curled in her nest of undersized blankets, he pushes strands of sweaty hair out of her face, traces the curve of her jaw.“Maybe,” he says, voice rough and low and somehow different, “if you keep making the same mistake over and over again…Maybe then the real mistake was thinking it was a mistake in the first place.”

She smiles into his arm.She thinks maybe they’ll be ok.


End file.
